The True Believer

Intro

A book on mass movements by Eric Hoffer, winner of Presidential Gold Medal

Quotes

• 'There is thus a conservatism of the destitute as profound as the

conservatism of the privileged, and the former is as much a factor in the perpetuation of a social order as the latter.' -p3

• Since all mass movements draw their adherents from the same types of humanity and appeal to the same types of mind, it follows:

(a) all mass movements are competitive, and the gain of one in adherents is the loss of all the others; (b) all mass movements are interchangeable. One mass movement readily transforms itself into another. A religious movement may develop into a social revolution or a nationalist movement; a social revolution, into militant nationalism or a religious movement; a nationalist movement into a social revolution or a religious movemen

• The intensity of discontent seems to be in inverse proportion to

the distance from the object fervently desired.